I must admit that I am very impressed with XII. I wasn't convinced of how great it was until I bought it a couple weeks ago (collectors edition, baby!). But yes, it is quite a game. It almost goes without saying that the battle system is by far the best element of this iteration. It's incredibly fast and eliminates much of the waste that the past random battles created. Now, all the time clocked in is actual playtime. Aside from boss battles, we don't have to watch the fruity little sword twirls and victory dances, and thank God there are no more loot and experience screens.
As for the story...Eh, it's good. I'm certainly relieved there's no central love story that the writers were concentrating on, it was old. Not that a love story is a bad thing, but with nearly every FF in the past, excluding VI, It felt like a 13 year old girl wrote it. One of my gripes with the FF series, still is it's lack of depth of the characters, they're all perfect. Yes, they have their problems, but they always make the "right" choice- be merciful, don't take revenge, be noble and honorable. I agree with all of those things, but in reality, people aren't always noble and honorable; people want and do take revenge. It's one reason I really really liked Vossler in this game, as well as Reddas, but for those who have yet to play the game I will not say why aside from saying that they felt real.
Another humongous gripe, is Vaan. What the **** is he doing in this game!? His character is worthless and contributes nothing to the overall story, he looks asexual, acts immature, and is a serious hindrance on this, otherwise, fine product from Square-Enix. Balthier is much more worthy of being the "leading man" as he so often points out. So why do we have to suffer through the plague that is Vaan?
And that's all I have to say about that.
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